Opposition to circumcision in Canada is growing rapidly following the death of a baby in the province of British Columbia. The boy bled to death after being circumcised (using the plastibell device) in August 2002.
The recently-released report of the BC coroner found that the baby, Ryleigh Roman Bryan McWillis, aged one month, was circumcised in the Penticton Regional Hospital on 20 August 2002. He was released from the hospital into the care of his parents; suffered extensive bleeding from the wound; was returned to Penticton Hospital; and was subsequently transferred to the B.C. Children's Hospital, where he died less than 48 hours after the operation. The Coroner concluded that the death was due to "multiorgan hypoxic/ischemic injury due to hypovolemic shock as a result of massive hemorrhage from a circumcision site." Tragic though it is, there is nothing extraordinary in this outcome: bleeding and death are well-known complications of circumcision. A similar case was reported by the Miami Herald in 1993, a case occurred in Ireland in 2003, and cases have also been recorded in Australia.
The Coroner further showed that the doctor at Penticton Hospital performed the circumcision in the absence of any medical indication or need, but at the request of his parents. This practice – needless circumcision at parental request – is thus shown to be hazardous to children's lives. As Dr Greg Watters and Stephen Carroll have shown in their study of parental attitudes in rural New South Wales, parents rarely appreciate the risks associated with the excision of an infant's prepuce, and are ill-equipped to make decisions that should properly be made after expert paediatric advice or left to the boy himself.
CBC News British Columbia, Feb 11 2004
PENTICTON, B.C. - The report on the death of an infant following a routine circumcision has triggered renewed calls to ban the procedure in B.C. Ryleigh Roman McWillis was a month old when he bled to death following the operation in Penticton in August, 2002.
A coroner's report released this week makes no recommendations for change, which dismays his parents.
Brent McWillis had hoped the coroner's report into the death of his son Ryleigh would help prevent a similar tragedy in future.
"It was a very unfortunate and nightmarish thing that happened to us," he says. "The only thing I want to see is that it doesn't happen to anyone else's child." Ryleigh's parents say they'd like all hospitals to adopt better standards to care for infants following a circumcision.
Meanwhile, other groups opposed to circumcision, are calling for an internal review by the B.C. College of Physicians and Surgeons. "This surgery is not necessary, and if the surgery is not therapeutic, the risk cannot be undertaken," says John Geisheker, the lawyer for the group, Doctors Against Circumcision.
Dr. Eugene Outerbridge of the Canadian Pediatric Society says a study last year, showed male circumcision exposes children to risk, with no real medical benefit. But Outerbridge says an outright ban would violate the rights of religious minorities.
CBC Radio (British Colombia), Friday, February 20, 2004
From Ottawa journalist Thom Barker, a clear and powerful statement calling for a ban on routine infant circumcision in Canada. A year and a half ago a baby in British Columbia bled to death after he was circumcised. Last week a coroner's report made no recommendation on the future of the practice. Thom Barker is a freelance writer in Ottawa. On Commentary he has a suggestion.
Last week we were horrifically reminded that circumcising baby boys is not without the highest risk. It can and occasionally does lead to their deaths. But the articles I've seen on it recently didn't focus on how unnecessary it is; they discussed how circumcision should be done more safely. So with safety in mind here's my advice. Ban it! Stop mutilating infant boys for no good reason.
For nearly 30 years now the Canadian Paediatric Society has officially stated that circumcision is medically unnecessary. Long term statistical evidence has proven that the risks of doing it outweigh the risks of not doing it, and medical ethicists almost universally decry it.
So why do we continue to circumcise about one out of every five boys born in this country? Why do we continue to leave it up to the parents and doctors to decide? The first reason is familiarity. Circumcision has been and remains such a common practice - to make baby look like daddy - that we're reluctant to recognize it for what it really is: genital mutilation. To do so would be to condemn our parents, our friends, our siblings and possibly ourselves as guilty of criminal assault.
More problematic is the religious justification. Childhood circumcision of boys is an integral aspect of the Jewish and Muslim traditions and cultures. But similar arguments based on tradition did not stop Canada in 1997 from banning female genital mutilation. It did not stop us because it was viewed as a human rights issue. In fact, as a society, we routinely override the rights of parents to protect children from perceived harm. So why doesn't this protection extend to infant boys?
Male circumcision is hardly universal even among practising Jews and Muslims. In fact, there are significant numbers of both, including religious leaders, who advocate discontinuing the practice because it's contrary to more fundamental principles of their faiths, most importantly respect for human life. So even in the religious context it seems that parents have some freedom of choice. I was born Catholic. At about the same time that I might have had my foreskin removed, I was baptized instead. When I later renounced my Catholicism I resented having been baptized against my will. But fortunately I didn't have an irreversible physical deformity to forever remind me of it.
Would it be so egregious to make parents wait until their sons can make the decision for themselves? There's no end to the legal protection adults have to damage themselves.
For Commentary, I'm Thom Barker in Ottawa.
Further information
Association for Genital Integrity
Circumcision Information Resource Centre
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